“africa exerted a profound influence on cultures of resistance to slavery, yet its role is often overlooked”

When I last spoke with the historian Sudhir Hazareesingh we were talking about Black Spartacus, his prize-winning biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture. Now, we’re meeting again

On 2 January 1893, the black American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture on Haiti to an audience in Chicago. It was widely alleged, he reflected, that the Caribbean repub

Danny Bird What was the genesis of Legenda? Was there a moment when you knew you had to write this book? Janina Ramirez From the start of my academic career, I learned from [Palestinian-American liter

Over a long career, John Hardman has specialised to great effect in teasing out, from speeches, decrees, minutes, memoranda, letters, diaries and unsent drafts, the varied moods of French political de

Reins in hands, three young sisters ride the coils of an enormous blue snake. Waving a rattle and smiling happily, the fourth, a baby, is held around her plump middle by its tail. Passers-by dive out

When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appea