American history

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A Choctaw Indian encampment on the Mississippi River, circa 1833. Painting by Karl Bodmer (Photo by Getty Images)

The dispossession of Native Americans . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Halloween postcard

10 things you didn’t know about the history (and mystery) of Halloween

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.