American history

A photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken after his November 1860 election and before his March 1861 inauguration.

How Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election victory set America on the path to Civil War

Life in bondage Formerly enslaved African-Americans sit for a photograph in Virginia, c1850. At that time, 4 million people were still enslaved across the US, as debates around abolition raged on both sides of the Atlantic (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

The black abolitionists who shocked Victorian Britain

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An illustration of slaves picking cotton on a plantation. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

David Olusoga "Black history affects all of us – it is British history" . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Afua Hirsh with her ‘Enslaved’ co-presenters Simcha Jacobovici and Samuel L Jackson

Afua Hirsch on tracing the story of the transatlantic slave trade

The ‘Pilgrims’ stride onto American soil in 1620 after crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower, as shown in a 20th-century painting. The colony that they established was – initially, at least – a genuinely enlightened place, writes James Evans. (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Myth of the Mayflower: the voyage that made America?

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Writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson at her home in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Alamy)

Isabel Wilkerson: “Caste is like the wind. You may not be able to see it, but it’s a quietly destructive force” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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The ‘Pilgrims’ stride onto American soil in 1620 after crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower, as shown in a 20th-century painting by WJ Aylward (Photo by Getty Images)

The Mayflower . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Podcast Fredrik Logevall Web large

JFK: the path to power . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Pilgrim Fathers boarding the Mayflower

5 facts about the Mayflower

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Isabel Wilkerson. (Photo by Alamy)

Isabel Wilkerson on caste in America . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

WW2 surrender signed, 2 September 1945

Second World War

How and when did WW2 end?

Illustration for BBC History Magazine.

How potatoes conquered the world

US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference. (Photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Donald Trump: a president without precedent?

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The Pilgrim fathers arrive at Plymouth, Massachusetts on board the Mayflower. (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“They decided that God must be leading them to North America”: the Puritans journey to the Mayflower . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

As seen in this early 19th-century depiction of an initiation, Masons have long used secrecy to

A history of Freemasonry: from Enlightenment ideals to satanic conspiracy stories