To celebrate the launch of Gilder Lehrman’s new website, we at History Now thought it appropriate to provide readers with a special, expanded issue. We chose for our topic one of the central themes in our national history: the causes and consequences of war. We asked eleven leading historians to explore the ways in which our society has been shaped and reshaped by battlefield conflicts and by the political, technological, and social changes that these conflicts bring in their wake. Thus, in this special issue of History Now , our essays consider conflicts ranging from the...

Every teacher knows that a novel can sometimes convey the mood and spirit of a historical era or event more powerfully than a textbook. And every teacher also knows that some novels have even made history. These are books that every student ought to read. In this issue, History Now focuses on six "books that changed history," placing each one in its historical context and suggesting why it remains relevant today. You are likely to be familiar with most of these books—perhaps one of them is your favorite novel. We hope you will enjoy what our scholars have to say about the...

Born into a prominent Basque family on November 12, 1735, in the province of Vizcaya, Spain, Diego de Gardoqui was a treasured son of Don José Ignacio Gardoqui y Azpegorta and his wife Maria Simona. Groomed to be a banker, he was sent to London to learn the trade and especially the language of the economic philosopher Adam Smith. Diego became fluent in English, an attribute that was rare among Spaniards of his day and that would soon come in handy. In 1765, the patriarch of the family passed away, leaving Doña Maria Simona in charge of one of the largest codfish trading...

On November 29, 1775, more than six months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Congress’s Secret Committee of Correspondence gave instructions to Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to travel to Paris to secure European aid and alliances. Deane arrived in Paris in July of 1776. Lee, who was in London, was the second commissioner to arrive, just before Franklin in late December. By that time, Franklin’s fame as an inventor and philosophe was well known. His relationship with Spain began in 1774, when Don Gabriel de Borbón, the twenty-two-year-old...

When Marie-Felicité Saint-Maxent La Roche was born in New Orleans on December 27, 1755, her future looked easy to predict: a pampered childhood, an arranged early marriage to the scion of a wealthy family, the motherhood of many children, and long summer days sipping mint juleps on her veranda chatting with friends. For a while she followed this well-traveled and traditional path. Before her twenty-second birthday, she married Jean Baptiste Honore d’Estrehan, the son of a former French treasurer, and shortly after had a daughter, Adelaide. While the death of her husband at the...

In 1779, the king of Spain declared war on Britain. Like his ally the king of France, he decided to fight his British enemies while they were busy trying to defeat the American Revolution. As soon as he declared war, the Mississippi River and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico became a wartime borderland. The Spanish colony of Louisiana was on the west side of the Mississippi River, and the British colony of West Florida was on the east side. Because thirteen British colonies rebelled against Britain in the Revolution, people often assume that there were only thirteen British...

Early in the throes of the American Revolution in the summer of 1776, Thomas Jefferson was wrestling with a document to King Carlos III of Spain and King Louis XVI of France that would bring much-needed help to the embattled American colonies. The colonies had been at war with Britain for more than a year now, and the military situation was dire. Without the direct intervention of Britain’s adversaries, Spain and France, on America’s side, the colonies could not hope to prevail against the superior British army and navy. The colonists already had decided to break free from...

In 1775, Virginia’s governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, issued a proclamation offering liberty to all enslaved Blacks who would join Great Britain’s military forces and defeat the rebellious Americans fighting for their independence. In doing so, he followed a long-established Spanish model of Black military service, both free and enslaved. The story of Great Britain’s Black Loyalists and their eventual diaspora to Nova Scotia, the Bahamas, London, and Sierra Leone has received considerable attention, but less popular attention has focused on the Black troops Spain deployed...

Most Americans are familiar with the role leading Frenchmen played in the story of the American Revolution. They admire the young and idealistic Marquis de Lafayette, scorn the wily peace treaty negotiator the Comte de Vergennes, and cheer the brave General Rochambeau. But few recognize the critically important Spanish allies in the struggle for independence, among them Diego de Gardoqui, who was responsible for channeling secret aid to the rebelling colonies via his prosperous trading company; Don Gabriel de Borbón, son of Spanish King Carlos III who befriended Benjamin...

Before learning of Commodore George Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, few Americans knew anything about the Philippine Islands. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning In the Days of McKinley , Margaret Leech tells the story of the newly elected president apologetically informing one supplicant for a consular post that no appointment remained except to "a place called Manila, `somewhere away around on the other side of the world [though] he did not know exactly where, for he had not had time to look it up.’" When Dewey had left for...