Frank Welsh – författare

‘A remarkable feat of scholarship, fairness and readability, full of lively detail with a freshness of style which brings new life to the narrative’ Anthony SampsonThroughout its turbulent history, South Africa has frequently been the focus of worldwide attention – usually hostile. Yet prejudice and ignorance about the country are widespread. The evolution of the present-day ‘Rainbow Nation’ has taken place under conditions of sometimes extreme pressure. Since long before the arrival of the first European settlers in the seventeenth century, the country has been home to a complex and uneasily co-existing blend of races and cultures, and successive waves of immigrants have added to the already volatile mixture.Despite the euphoria which greeted the dismantling of the apartheid system and the election as President of Nelson Mandela in April 1994, South Africa’s history, racial mix and recent political upheavals suggest it will not easily free itself from the legacy of its tumultuous past. Newly revised and updated, Frank Welsh’s vividly written, even-handed and authoritative history casts new light on many of South Africa’s most cherished myths. Like his A History of Hong Kong, it will surely come to be regarded as definitive.

In 1842 a "barren island" was reluctantly ceded by China to an unenthusiastic Britain. "Hong Kong", grumbled Palmerston, "will never be a mart of trade". But from the outset the new colony prospered, its early growth owing much to the energy and resourcefulness of opium traders, who soon diversified in more respectable directions. In 1859 the Kowloon Peninsula was sold to Britain, and in 1898 a further area of the mainland, the "New Territories", was leased to Britain for 99 years - the arrangement from which the present difficulties spring. Despite its extraordinary economic success, which has made it one of the world's leading commercial centres, Hong Kong has never quite shaken off the raffishness of its early days. It has continued to be a source of embarrassment to British governments, and now, as its enforced return to China approaches, its future is the focus of worldwide attention and speculation. This work is an evocation of Hong Kong and the characters of those who shaped it, from its buccaneering origins to its post-war growth.

The first single-volume history of the mutual relations between the constituent parts of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), made topical by the recent devolution developments in Scotland and Wales.By comparison with the United States, the history of the United Kingdom as an undivided entity has been quite short. This book describes the history of each constituent part, their interaction, and the effect of external events. As soon as British history is seen as an integral part of world (especially European) history, the perspective alters drastically.Until 1803 France was optimistically assumed to be part of the realm. Less than a century elapsed between 1829, when the grant of a very restricted franchise to Catholics made the inclusion of Ireland more than a political fiction, to 1922, when the Irish Free State emerged. Scotland, with England the main constituent of the UK since 1707, has retained its own legal system, administration and established church (the Queen changes her religion each time she passes Berwick). Wales retains a distinctive culture and language, albeit one on an expensive life-support machine.

10000 - 500 BC: The river civilizations; Danube; Mesopotamia; Indus; Early empires; China to the Zhou; Egypt; Mycenae and Knossos. 500 BC - 1000 AD: An Axial Age?; Plato; Ezra; Buddha; Confucius; The glory that was Greece; Alexander and his successors; Rome to Byzantium; Republic to empire; Jews and Christians, Constantine; Islam; Rise of Islam, Muslim Spain, Early America; India to the Guptas; Gaul and Britannia; Clovis to Charlemagne, Angles and Saxons, Carolingian State, Vikings. 1000 - 1600: Clash of cultures; Holy Roman Empire and the papacy; Crusades; Great Schism; Africa and America; Sudanese empires; Aztecs and Incas; Plans and Forest Indians; Pueblos and Beotuk; China and Asia; The horse in history; China and the Mongols; SE Asia; Buddhism and the Jains; Persia; India.1600 - 1789: Renaissance and Reformation; Humanism and art; Constance and Hussites; printing and paper; Germany; France; Britain; New Worlds; Portuguese and Dutch East Indies; Spanish America; North America; Gunpowder Empires; Turkey; Persia; Moghuls; Europe in America; Colonial wars; development of the New World; The East; China to the 16thc; Japan; Korea; SE Asia; E Indies; Birth of Modern Europe; English Commonwealth; Union; 30 Yrs War; Russia; Poland; Ukraine; Enlightenment; Romanticism; European thought; women writers; American Revolution. 1789 - 1914: French Revolution; Napoleon; Reactions; influence; Reconstruction; Industrial Revolution; Congress system; unification of Italy; German Empire; Ottoman decline; India and China; Raj; Qing China; Opium Wars; US-UK rivalry; Japanese empire; Americas; Manifest Destiny; Mexican Wars; slavery; Civil War; Reconstruction; Explorations; Australia and New Zealand; Pacific; Arctic; cartography; New Empires; France; Germany; Belgium; Scramble for Africa; New Revolutions; Mexico; China; South Africa; India.1914 - 2003: Stumbling into war; Germany and Austria; Russia; Conduct of war; Post WW1; Versailles; Russian Revolution; Spanish Civil War; WW2; Hitler; Conduct of War; Post WW2; UN; genocide; China; Decolonization; Cold War; Middle East; Shrinking the World; air travel; Internet; IT; Soviet collapse; Balkan Wars; Rise of China. Epilogue.

In a narrative beginning almost 1.5 million years ago with the emergence of Homo erectus, Frank Welsh takes the reader from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the Industrial Revolution to the age of terrorism. Using his masterly storytelling skills, he recounts the epic story of human growth, survival and achievement across all continents and ages. Providing insight into the lives of ordinary people in every corner of the globe, this comprehensive book is the perfect introduction to the human history of our planet.