1724: A Year in Review

For those of you who care about such things. 1724 was a leap year, giving us an extra day in which stuff could happen—and happen they did. Royal Heads King Philip V, the first Bourbon of Spain,* abdicated in favor of his sixteen-year-old son, Louis I on January 14. I have read several reasons why…

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Word With A Past: Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla tactics are probably as ancient as war itself. The word itself dates from the Napoleonic wars, a product of the Peninsular War of 1808-14 in Spain—the most prolonged and, with the exception of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, most destructive campaign of the period. Napoleon’s invasion of Spain had its official roots in long-simmering tensions…

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Independence Lost:

Those of you who’ve been hanging out in the Margins for a while now know there are some types of history books that can be counted on to make me say “I want to read this”: Books that tell a story we think we know from a radically different persepctive Books that deal with people…

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