The first international history of railroads and railroad infrastructure told through stunningly reproduced maps.

Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how people grew and made things to where and how they lived and moved. Railroads rewrote not only world geography but also the history of maps and mapping. Today, the needs of train companies and their users continue to shape the maps we consume and consult.

Featuring full-color maps primarily from the British Library's distinguished collection--many of them never before published--A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps is the first international history of railroads and railroad infrastructure told through maps. Jeremy Black includes examples from six continents, spanning a variety of uses from railroad planning and operations to guides for passengers, shippers, and tourists.

Arranged chronologically, the maps are accompanied by explanatory text that sheds light on the political, military, and urban development histories associated with the spread of railroads. A final chapter considers railroad maps from games, books, and other cultural artifacts. For anyone interested in the history of railroads or maps, A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps will offer new and unexpected insights into their intertwined global history.

Once described as that metropolis of dress and debauchery by the Scottish poet David Mallet, Paris has always had a reputation for a peculiar joie de vivre, from art to architecture, cookery to couture, captivating minds and imaginations across the Continent and beyond. In Paris: A Short History, historian Jeremy Black examines the unique cultural circumstances that made Paris the vibrant capital it is today.

Black explores how Paris has been shaped throughout time, starting in the first century BCE, when the city was founded by the Parisii. From a small Gallic capital conquered by the Romans, Paris transformed into a flourishing medieval city full of spectacular palaces and cathedrals, including Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame de Paris. During the illustrious reigns of Louis XIV and XV, Paris became one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan capitals in the world, before the Revolution tore French society apart, changing the city forever. The Belle Époque brought new ideas and architecture to the city, including the iconic Eiffel Tower, before the destruction of World War I and II launched a massive regeneration project. Black completes his history by exploring present-day Paris and its role as the seat of a leading power on the world stage, and its future as the host of the 2024 Olympic Games.

Paris: A Short History deftly demonstrates that the history of Paris is about more than just a city: it is the history of a culture, a society, and a state that has impacted the rest of the world through centuries of changing fortunes.

Amid the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2021 and the escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the geopolitical balance of power has changed significantly in a very short period. If current trends continue, we may be witnessing a tectonic realignment unseen in more than a century.
In 1904, Halford Mackinder delivered a seminal lecture entitled The Geographical Pivot of History to a packed house at the Royal Geographical Society in London about the historic changes then taking place on the world stage. Britain was the great power of that historical moment, but its political, military, and economic primacy was under serious challenge from the United States, Germany, and Russia. Mackinder predicted that the heartland of Eastern Europe held the key to global hegemony and that the struggle for control over this region would be the next great conflict. Ten years later, when an assassin's bullet in Sarajevo launched the world into a calamitous war, Mackinder's analysis proved prescient.
As esteemed historian Jeremy Black argues in this timely new volume, the 2020s may be history's next great pivot point. The continued volatility of the global system in the wake of a deadly pandemic exacerbates these pressures. At the same time, the American public remains divided by the question of engagement with the outside world, testing the limits of US postwar hegemony. The time has come for a reconsideration of the 120 years from Mackinder's lecture to now, as well as geopolitics of the present and of the future.

This is a comprehensive history of Portugal that covers the whole span, from the Stone Age to today. An introduction provides an understanding of geographical and climatic issues, before an examination of Portugal's prehistory and classical Portugal, from the Stone Age to the end of the the Roman era.

Portugal's history from ad420 to the thirteenth century takes in the Suevi, Visigoths and Moors. Then, a look at medieval Portugal, covers the development of Christian Portugal culminating with the expulsion of the Moors, with a focus on key sites.

A subsequent section on Spanish rule, between 1580 and 1640, explains why Spain took over and why Spanish rule collapsed.

There is a significant focus on Portugal's global role, particularly during the age of exploration, or expansion, in the fifteenth century to 1580: Manueline Portugal, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama and Bel m. Portugal was the first of the Atlantic empires, with territory in the Azores, Madeira, West Africa and Brazil, and it remained a major empire until the 1820s, retaining an African empire until the 1970s. It's empire in Asia - in Malacca, Macao, Goa and Timor - continued even longer, until the 1990s. Black shows how Portugal had a global impact, but the world, too, had an impact on Portugal.

Baroque Portugal, between 1640 and 1800, is explored through palaces in Mafra, Pombal and elsewhere and the wealth of Brazil.

The nineteenth century brought turmoil in the form of a French invasion, the Peninsular War, Brazilian independence, successive revolutions, economic issues and the end of the monarchy.

Republican Portugal brought further chaos in the early years of the twentieth century, then the dictatorship of Salazar and its end in the Carnation Revolution of 1974. Portugal's role in both world wars is examined, also its wars in Africa.

From the overthrow of autocracy to a new constitution and the leadership of Soares, contemporary, democratic Portugal is explored, including the fiscal crisis of recent years.

Throughout Black introduces the history and character of the country's principal regions, including the Azores, Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands. He looks at key national sites, at Portuguese food and wine and the arts, with special sections devoted to port, Portugal's famous tiles and the university established at Coimbra in 1290.

The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even further, employing maps, charts, reconnaissance, and the systematic recording and processing of geographical and topographical information on an unprecedented scale. As Jeremy Black--one of the world's leading military and cartographic historians--convincingly shows in this lavish full-color book, it is impossible to understand the events and outcomes of the Second World War without deep reference to mapping at all levels. In World War II, maps themselves became the weapons.

A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps traces how military cartography developed from simply recording and reflecting history to having a decisive impact on events of a global scale. Drawing on one hundred key maps from the unparalleled collections of the British Library and other sources--many of which have never been published in book form before--Jeremy Black takes us from the prewar mapping programs undertaken by both Germany and the United Kingdom in the mid-1930s through the conflict's end a decade later. Black shows how the development of maps led directly to the planning of the complex and fluid maneuvers that defined the European theater in World War II: for example, aerial reconnaissance photography allowed for the charting of beach gradients and ocean depths in the runup to the D-Day landings, and the subsequent troop movements at Normandy would have been impossible without the help of situation maps and photos. In the course of the conflict, both in Europe and the Pacific, the realities of climate, terrain, and logistics--recorded on maps--overcame the Axis powers. Maps also became propaganda tools as the pages of Time outlined the directions of the campaigns and the Allies dropped maps from their aircraft.
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In this thrilling and unique book, Jeremy Black blends his singular cartographic and military expertise into a captivating overview of World War II from the air, sea, and sky, making clear how fundamental maps were to every aspect of this unforgettable global conflict.

Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, Western Warfare, 1775-1882 offers students an unrivaled account of civil and international conflicts, integrating both naval and land warfare. It covers military capability as well as conflict; social and political contexts as well as weaponry; and tactics and strategy. In addition to examining major conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Wars of German Unification, the book redresses the imbalance of previous treatments by examining the heretofore neglected conflicts in Latin America as well as insurgency and counter-insurgency in Europe. In taking a global perspective, Jeremy Black gives a much more reliable assessment of what constitutes military capability, and thus challenges the technological determinism and linear conceptions of developments in military science that continue to characterize much of military history. As a result, this book reveals a much more complex dynamic, with the author going so far as to question the idea of 'modernity' itself.

Now in its second edition, The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History has been updated to include recent scholarship, and an analysis of how debates have changed in light of recent key events such as the Black Lives Matter movement.

Primarily focused on the Atlantic Slave Trade, this study places slavery within a broader world context and includes significant detailed coverage of Africa. With a chronological approach, it guides students through the origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade to its expansion and eventual abolition. Its final chapters explore the legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade by comparing it to other systems of slavery outside of the Atlantic region, and analyze the persistence of modern-day slavery. As well as offering an analysis of historiography, the updated bibliography and conclusion, which considers the recent Black Lives Matter protests and their aftermath, provide a fresh account of how slavery has shaped our understanding of the modern world.

Unmatched in its breadth of information, chronological sweep, and geographical coverage, The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History is the most useful introductory resource for all students who study the Atlantic Slave Trade in a world context.

In The Holocaust: History and Memory, New Edition, Jeremy Black revisits his brilliant and wrenching account of the brutal mass slaughter of Jews during World War II and the subsequent remembrance and misremembering of this genocide.

Black challenges the prevailing view that separates the Holocaust from Germany's military objectives with compelling evidence that Germany's war on the Allies was deeply intertwined with Hitler's war on Jews. As Hitler expanded his control over more territories, the extermination of Jews became a significant war aim, particularly in the east. Long before the establishment of extermination camps, the German army and collaborators carried out mass shootings, resulting in the deaths of many and the extermination of entire Jewish communities. Notably, Rommel's attack on Egypt was a crucial step toward the larger goal of annihilating 400,000 Jews living in Palestine. Additionally, Hitler interpreted America's initial focus on war with Germany, rather than Japan, as evidence of influential Jewish interests in American policy, which further justified and escalated his war against Jewry through the Final Solution. In chilling detail, Black also unveils compelling evidence that many ordinary Germans must have been aware of the genocide happening around them.

The Holocaust: History and Memory, New Edition is an essential, concise, and highly readable history. Now extensively revised and updated, it continues to offer a powerful testimony to those forever silenced by the Holocaust, ensuring that their horrifying fate will never be forgotten.

In A Brief History of History, acclaimed historian Jeremy Black seeks to reinvigorate and redefine our ideas about history. The stories we tell about the past are a crucial aspect of all cultures. However, while the traditional storytelling process--what we think of as history in the proper sense--is useful, it is also misleading, not least because it leads to the repetition of bias and misinformation.

Black suggests that the conventional idea of history and historians is constructed too narrowly, as it fails to engage with the broad nature of lived experience. By focusing on a singular idea or story within the history being explored, we fail to understand the interconnectivity of the everyday experience.

A Brief History of History challenges accepted norms of the historical perspective and offers a view of human history that will surprise many and (perhaps) infuriate some. But above all, it is a history of historians written for this moment in time, a time when the traditional Eurocentric approach to history now appears wholly inappropriate.

The War of 1812 is etched into American memory with the burning of the Capitol and the White House by British forces, The Star-Spangled Banner, and the decisive naval battle of New Orleans. Now a respected British military historian offers an international perspective on the conflict to better gauge its significance.

In The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, Jeremy Black provides a dramatic account of the war framed within a wider political and economic context than most American historians have previously considered. In his examination of events both diplomatic and military, Black especially focuses on the actions of the British, for whom the conflict was, he argues, a mere distraction from the Napoleonic War in Europe.

Black describes parallels and contrasts to other military operations throughout the world. He stresses the domestic and international links between politics and military conflict; in particular, he describes how American political unease about a powerful executive and strong army undermined U.S. military efforts. He also offers new insights into the war in the West, amphibious operations, the effects of the British blockade, and how the conflict fit into British global strategy.

For those who think the War of 1812 is a closed book, this volume brims with observations and insights that better situate this American war on the international stage.

A concise history of the Caribbean's long and fascinating history, from pre-contact civilisations to the present day

This is a concise history, intended for travellers, but of inestimable value to anyone looking for an overview of the Caribbean and its mainland coastal states, with a focus on the past few centuries.

The history of the Caribbean does not make much sense without factoring in the cities - Pensacola, New Orleans, Galveston - and the ambitions of the states on its continental shores, notably the United States.

This account is grounded in a look at the currents and channels of the sea, and its constraints, such as the Mosquito Coast, followed by the history of 'pre-contact' civilisations, focusing on the Maya and the Toltec Empire.

With the arrival of the Europeans, from the late fifteenth century to the early years of the seventeenth century, the story becomes one of exploration, conquest and settlement. Black charts the rise of slave economies and the Caribbean's place in the Atlantic world, also the arrival of the English - Hawkins and Drake - to challenge the Spanish.

He examines the sugar and coffee slave economies of the English, French, Spanish and Dutch, also the successful rebellion in Haiti in the eighteenth century, and how the West Indies were further transformed by the Louisiana Purchase, the American conquest of Florida and the incorporation of Texas.

He discusses the impact of Bolivar's rebellion in Spanish America, the end of slavery in the British Caribbean, and war between Mexico and America; also the defeat of the South by the Union, the American takeover of the Panama Canal project from France, and the Spanish-American War.

The first half of the twentieth century focuses on growing US power: intervention in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti and the Dominican Republic; Cuba as an American protectorate, and civil wars in Mexico.

The Cold War brought new tensions and conflict to the region, but the same period also saw the rise of the leisure industry. The last part of the book looks at the Caribbean today - political instability in Venezuela and Colombia, crime in Mexico, post-Castro Cuba - and the region's future prospects.

This brilliantly concise history of the Pacific Ocean nevertheless succeeds in examining both the indigenous presence on ocean's islands and Western control or influence over the its islands and shores. There is a particular focus on the period from the 1530s to 1890 with its greater Western coastal and oceanic presence in the Pacific, beginning with the Spanish takeover of the coasts of modern Central America, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and continuing with the Spaniards in the Philippines.

There is also an emphasis on the very different physical and human environments of the four quadrants of the Pacific - the north-east, the north-west, the south-east and the south-west - and of the 'coastal' islands, that is the Aleutians, Japan and New Zealand, and continental coastlines. The focus is always on the interactions of Japan, California, Peru, Australia and other territories with the ocean, notably in terms of trade, migration and fishing.

Black looks first at the geology, currents, winds and physical make-up of the Pacific, then the region's indigenous inhabitants to 1520. He describes the Pacific before the arrival of Europeans, its history of settlement, navigation methods and religious practices.

From Easter Island, the focus shifts to European voyages, from Magellan to Cook and Tasman, the problems they faced, not least the sheer scale of the ocean. Black looks at the impact of these voyages on local people, including the Russians in the Aleutian Islands.

Outside control of the region grew from 1788 to 1898. The British laid claim to Australia and America to the Phillipines. Western economic and political impact manifested in sandalwood and gold rushes, and the coming of steamships accelerated this impact.

Territorial claims spread through Willis, Perry and the Americans, including to Hawaii. Black looks at the Maori wars in New Zealand and the War of the Pacific on the South American coast. Christian missionary activity increased, and Gaugin offered a different vision of the Pacific.

1899 to 1945 marked the struggle of empires: the rise of Japan as an oceanic power, and the Second World War in the Pacific as a critical moment in world history.

Oil-powered ships ushered in the American Age, from 1945 to 2015, bringing the end of the British Pacific. France had a continued role, in Tahiti and New Caledonia, but America had become the dominant presence. Black explores the political, economic and cultural impacts of, for example, Polynesians attending universities in America and Australasia; the spread of rugby; and relatively little international tension, although some domestic pressures remained, including instability in Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

The book ends with a look at the Pacific's future: pressures from industrial fishing, pollution and climate change; the rise of drug smuggling; greater Chinese influence leading to conflict with America and Australasia - the Pacific is once again on the frontline of military planning. But the Pacific's future also includes tourism, from Acapulco to Hawaii, and from Tahiti to Cairns.

The next in this series of admirably concise yet nevertheless comprehensive titles looks at the history of all Americans as well as America; its environmental history and its linkage to economic history; the political shaping of America; and America in the world, from being a colony to post-Cold War America.

Black examines the environmental history of America and its linkage to economic history, crucially, the clearing of forests; the spread of agriculture; mineral, coal and iron extraction; industrialisation; urbanisation; and current and growing climate-crisis concerns.

He explores the political shaping of America: indigenous American polities; free European and unfree African settlements; the creation of an American State, and its successes and failures from 1783 to 1861; Civil War; democratisation; the rise of the federal Government from the 1930s; the Civil Rights movement from the 1950s onwards, and tensions in more recent governance.

The book considers America in the World: as a pre-colonial and colonised space; as a newly-independent power, then a rising international one, the Cold War and the USA as the sole superpower in the post-Cold-War world.

These key themes are tackled chronologically for the sake of clarity, beginning with the geological creation of North America, human settlement and native American cultures to 1500; the arrival of Europeans and enslaved Africans to 1770 - the Spanish and French in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida, the English and French, and the Dutch and Swedes further north.

The focus then shifts to settler conflicts with native Americans and between European powers leading to a British-dominated North America by 1770. Then the end of European rule and the foundation of an American trans-continental state. The section dealing with the years from 1848 to 1880 looks at the Civil War between North and South, reconstruction and the creation of a new society.

Between 1880 and 1920, the United States became an industrial powerhouse and an international power, also a colonial power - the Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico - and a participant in the First World War.

The interwar years, 1921 to 1945, brought turmoil: the Roaring Twenties; the growth of Hollywood; Prohibition; jazz; the Great Depression and the New Deal; finally the Second World War.

1945 to 1968 was the American Age, brimming with confidence and success as the world's leading power, but also the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

Subsequent years to 1992 brought crisis and recovery: Watergate, the Reagan years and the USA as the sole world superpower.

In bringing the book right up to the present day, Black looks at factors that divide American society and economy, though it remains a country of tremendous energy.

The adventures and antics of James Bond have provided the world with many of the most gripping story lines of the last half-century. Fleming's novels were bestsellers in their day, and the Bond films have been even more popular, becoming the most enduring and successful film franchise in history. By some estimates, half of the world's population has seen a James Bond movie. A fascinating and accessible account of this global phenomenon, The Politics of James Bond uses the plots and characterizations in the novels and the blockbuster films to place Bond in a historical, cultural, and political context. Jeremy Black charts and explores how the settings and the dynamics of the Bond adventures have changed over time in response to shifts in the real-world environment in which the fictional Bond operates. Sex, race, class, and violence are each important factors, as Agent 007 evolves from Cold War warrior to foe of SPECTRE and eventually to world defender pitted against megalomaniacal foes. The development of Bond, his leading ladies, and the major plots all shed light on world political attitudes and reflect elements of the real espionage history of the period. This analysis of Bond's world and his lasting legacy offers an insightful look at both cultural history and popular entertainment. Jeremy Black is a professor of history at the University of Exeter. His books include Maps and Politics; War for America: The Fight for Independence, 1775-1783; and War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of the Continents, 1450-2000.

In this brilliant history of warfare, Jeremy Black is the first to approach the entire modern era from a comprehensive global perspective. He provides a wide-ranging account of the nature, purpose, and experience of war over the past half-millennium and argues the importance of viewing the rise of European power within a wider international context. Investigating both land and sea warfare, Black examines weaponry, tactics, strategy, and resources as well as the political, social, and cultural impact of conflict.

The book takes issue with established interpretations, not least those that emphasize technology, and challenges the view that European military and naval forces were dominant throughout the period. European mastery at sea did not always translate into equivalent success on land, says Black, and many non-European military systems--the Ottomans in their expansionist years, Babur and the Mughals in sixteenth-century India, and the Manchu in China in the following century, for example--were formidable in their own right. The author contends that in the nineteenth century, the focal period of Europe's military revolution, the international military balance shifted decisively. Black shows how military developments, combined with political, economic, and ideological shifts, influenced the nature and success of European imperialism. Linking debates on early modern history with those of more recent centuries, he offers a fundamental reexamination of the role of war in the progress of nations.

Cannae and Agincourt, Waterloo and Gettysburg, Stalingrad and Midway, this compact volume collects the most influential battles and conflicts in history. Covering the past twenty-five centuries, editor Jeremy Black analyzes the effects these events have had on the development of states and civilizations.

Organized chronologically in seven parts, the chapters feature ancient and medieval worlds as well as the wars of the past hundred years, including recent conflicts in the Middle East. The contributors analyze land battles as well as sieges such as Constantinople (1453) and Tenochtitlan (1521); naval battles such as Actium (31 BCE), Trafalgar (1805), and Tsushima (1905); and the crucial conflicts in the air during the Battle of Britain (1940) and the American attack on Japan (1945).

The Great Battles in History's coverage is truly worldwide in scope, from the battle in Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, where the Germans defeated the Romans, to Hakata Bay in 1281, where the Japanese defeated the Mongols, and the first battle of Panipat in 1526, where the Mughals conquered Hindustan. Black presents a masterly overview of advances in military technology, and of the changing tactics and strategy of battlefield commanders from Hannibal to Napoleon Bonaparte, Bernard Montgomery, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This compendium is essential reading for anyone interested in military history.

Dedicated fans of Jane Austen's novels will delight in accompanying historian Jeremy Black through the drawing rooms, chapels, and battlefields of the time in which Austen lived and wrote. In this exceedingly readable and sweeping scan of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain, Black provides a historical context for a deeper appreciation of classic novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. While Austen's novels bring to life complex characters living in intimate surroundings, England in the Age of Austen provides a fuller account of what the village, the church, and the family home would really have been like. In addition to seeing how Austen's own reading helped her craft complex characters like Emma, Black also explores how recurring figures in the novels, such as George III or Fanny Burney, provide a focus for a historical discussion of the fiction in which they appear. Jane Austen's world was the source of her works and the basis of her readership, and understanding that world gives fans new insights into the multifaceted narratives she created.

The story of the battlefield in the 20th century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare, prominent military historian Jeremy Black offers a comprehensive global account of the history of tanks and armored warfare in the 20th and 21st centuries. First introduced onto the battlefield during the World War I, tanks represented the reconciliation of firepower and mobility and immediately seized the imagination of commanders and commentators concerned about the constraints of ordinary infantry. The developments of technology and tactics in the interwar years were realized in the German blitzkrieg in World War II and beyond. Yet the account of armor on the battlefield is a tale of limitations and defeats as well as of potential and achievements. Tank Warfare examines the traditional narrative of armored warfare while at the same time challenging it, and Black suggests that tanks were no silver bullet on the battlefield. Instead, their success was based on their inclusion in the general mix of weaponry available to commanders and the context in which they were used.

This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, reaching back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. His sweeping study will be essential reading for all students of military history.