How our hunger for land shaped history

The United States often presents its birth as a straightforward struggle for liberty – but reality was far more messy. In this first episode of HistoryExtra's four-part series on the American Revolutionary War, Elinor Evans is joined by Adam IP Smith to explore the colonies befor ...  Show more

Why did Protestant missionaries travel the globe across the course of centuries, only to convert remarkably few people? Alec Ryrie – author of new book The World’s Reformation – tells Elinor Evans about the neglected global history of early Protestant missions, how preachers trav ...  Show more

The enclosure of the commons was a centuries-long process. Gradually, through a combination of legal degrees and private acts, the land across Britain moved from a system of open field system to larger, enclosed farms. This was a transformative political, social and agricultur ...

A whole genre of movies is based on a relatively short period of nineteenth-century American history. But what is the real story behind battles between Native Americans and white settlers during westward expansion? In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, settlers flooded to ...  Show more

At its height the Iroquois Confederacy (or Haudenosaunee) - a union of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations - controlled lands from Quebec to Ohio.

Its origin story goes back to the legend of the warrior Hiawatha and the Peacemaker. In the end its ...

The Cold War, Prohibition, the Gold Rush, the Space Race. Every part of your life - the words you speak, the ideas you share - can be traced to our history, but how well do you really know the stories that made America? We'll take you to the events, the times and the pe ...  Show more