The Dead Will Arise tells the story of Nongqawuse, the young Xhosa girl whose prophecy of the resurrection of the dead lured an entire people to death by starvation. The Great Cattle-Killing of 1856-57, which she initiated, is one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood events in South Africa's history. Jeff Peires was the first historian to draw on all available sources, from oral tradition and obscure Xhosa texts to the private letters and secret reports of police informers and colon...

The idea that the period of social turbulence in the nineteenth century was a consequence of the emergence of the powerful Zulu kingdom under Shaka has been written about extensively as a central episode of southern African history.Considerable dynamic debate has focused on the idea that this period – the ‘mfecane’- left much of the interior depopulated, thereby justifying white occupation. One view is that ‘the time of troubles’ owed more to the Delagoa Bay Slave trade and the dema...

The true story, drawn from official documents and hours of personal interviews, of how Newfoundland and Labrador joined Confederation and became Canada's tenth province in 1949.A rich cast of characters--hailing from Britain, America, Canada and Newfoundland--battle it out for the prize of the resource-rich, financially solvent, militarily strategic island. The twists and turns are as dramatic as any spy novel and extremely surprising, since the "official" version ...

A bestselling historian shows how the British Empire created the modern world.**“Scrupulous scholarship and a rattling good tale.” —**Wall Street JournalThe British Empire was the largest in all history, its reach the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of the Second World War, over a fifth of the world's land surface and nearly a quarter of the world's population were under some form of British rule. Yet fo...

*On 26 January the convict transports moved into their new home as a handful of Aborigines on the shore set up a horrid howl and indicated by angry gestures with sticks and stones that the white man was not wanted.*More than a decade after his death, Manning Clark remains Australia's most eminent and controversial historian. A Short History of Australia, considered by many to be his greatest work, charts the nation's social, cultural and political growth from the arrival of that f...

If 1916 is the founding myth of the Irish state then the famine is the founding tragedy.It was a tragedy on a truly epic scale, the events of the famine came to pass not in one of the worlds poorest nations, but in what was at the time part of metropolitan Britain (following the Act of Union of 1800).Caused by the destruction of the staple food of the ordinary Irishman and women, the potato, by blight. the famine resulted in the massive depopulation of Irel...

If there are genuine questions about Australian history, there is something to puzzle over. The history ceases to be predictable—and dull.From the author of The Shortest History of Europe, acclaimed historian John Hirst, comes this fresh and stimulating approach to understanding Australia's past and present.Hirst asks and answers questions that get to the heart of Australia's history:Why did Aborigines not become farmers?How did a p...

"Though the story of the potato famine has been told before, it's never been as thoroughly reported or as hauntingly told." — New York PostIt started in 1845 and before it was over more than one million men, women, and children would die and another two million would flee the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was the worst disaster in the nineteenth century—it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perf...

Riots and Religion in Newfoundland delves into the history of conflict between our English and Irish ancestors, a controversial topic that has been overlooked, diminished, or completely ignored in many history books. David Dawe retraces the foundation of Newfoundland's religious history and explains how the battle between the English Protestants and the Irish Roman Catholics continued from the old country to the New World. This book will take you back in time as it highlights heinous crime...

Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced upon the world's richest deposits of diamonds and gold, setting off a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land. The result was the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and the devastation of the Boer...

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Comes with an Active Table of Contents.    This history is full of vivid details of the hard life of the first explorers and pioneers.    It covers the period from 1600 to 1901. It has all the makings of an adventure story with epic shipping voyages, politics, starvation, searches for water and minerals, convicts, and hard work.  In most countries, the story of the European settlers creating villages...

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the Briti...