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History - Modern (1750+) — page 6
287 public-domain history - modern (1750+) books, summarised. Page 6 of 6.

The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School
Francisco Ferrer Guardia
An ardent educator challenges church and state to build a revolutionary classroom where children think without fear, dogma, or coercion.

The Truth About the Congo: The Chicago Tribune Articles
Frederick Starr
An ethnologist's firsthand report on the Congo Free State offers an unconventional counter-argument to early twentieth-century international outrage, challenging foreign intervention while detailing the daily customs, labor dynamics, and imperial politics of Central Africa.

Paths of Glory: Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
A civilian journalist stumbles into the path of a juggernaut, recording the destruction of a quiet continent.

The French in Algiers: The Soldier of the Foreign Legion
Ernest Alby
A young soldier seeking military glory exchanges garrison routine for the harsh realities of colonial warfare in North Africa.

The Geneva Protocol
David Hunter Miller
A rigorous legal analysis examines whether global peace can be codified through compulsory arbitration, mutual security guarantees, and structured disarmament.

War Rhymes by Wayfarer
Abner Cosens
Poignant verses chronicle the Great War’s disruption of everyday life, blending home-front anxieties and battlefield grimness with the colloquial laments of a fictional German soldier named Fritz.

Zone Policeman 88
Harry Alverson Franck
A roving traveler takes a job as a census taker and plainclothes police officer in the Panama Canal Zone, mapping its human diversity and day-to-day realities.

Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain: A Documentary Perspective Of The Causes Of The War In South Africa
Unknown
The path to the Second Boer War is paved with constitutional debates, diplomatic deadlocks, and the fraying of fragile conventions between two imperial powers and two independent republics.

From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade
Frederic C. (Crawford) Curry
HOOK This account captures the transformation of a volunteer from a Canadian town into a seasoned trench soldier, documenting the brutal collision between Victorian idealism and the industrial reality of the Great War.

The Natural History of the Tea-Tree, with Observations on the Medical Qualities of Tea, and on the Effects of Tea-Drinking
John Coakley Lettsom
This examination of a global commodity balances botanical classification with a sober, physician’s caution regarding the health risks of a burgeoning habit. It offers a window into the eighteenth-century mind as it grapples with the rapid arrival of a new, addictive, and transformative social ritual.

Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined
Joseph McCabe
The persistence of belief often thrives in the dark, but a steady light of inquiry can reveal the mechanisms of the illusions that sustain it.

Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society
Unknown
A harvest of faith is planted across the globe, as early struggles in uncharted lands transform into a sprawling, organized network of missions and native churches.

Red blight
Mary Knight
A nation's fight for self-determination collapses into chaos when deceptive promises of security overshadow the hard reality of human freedom.

The Fifth Leicestershire: A Record of the 1/5th Battalion the Leicestershire Regiment, T.F., During the War, 1914-1919
John David Hills
The mud, the humor, and the harrowing reality of the Great War emerge here not through grand mythology, but through the precise, weary, and steadfast observations of those who lived it.

The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. III., PP. 205-261, I-XXXV, PL. 21, February 19, 1892
Various
Detailed textual analysis, geographic field reports, and meticulous administrative records merge into a single artifact of nineteenth-century inquiry, preserving the exact moment when uncharted territory transformed into measured landscape.

Pirate tales from the law
Arthur M. (Arthur Merton) Harris
Eighteenth-century pirates step out of romantic legend and into the harsh light of courtroom records, where sworn testimonies reveal their actual lives, petty squabbles, and eventual walk to the gallows.

The Survey, Volume 30, Number 3, Apr 19, 1913
Various
Across industrial mills, state legislatures, and public parks, early twentieth-century Americans confront the human costs of rapid economic expansion and social change.

Woman and Her Saviour in Persia: By a Returned Missionary
Thomas Laurie
A quiet account of female education and spiritual revival among 19th-century Persian Christians.

Expedition to discover the sources of the White Nile, in the years 1840, 1841, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Ferdinand Werne
An intrepid observer navigates the treacherous, shifting currents of the White Nile, capturing a vanishing world through the lens of a nineteenth-century European expedition. This record serves as a bridge to a frontier defined by both scientific curiosity and the brutal realities of imperial expansion.

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461: Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852
Various
An anti-slavery steamer on the African coast intercepts a suspected vessel; inside a locked suburban house, a young man with pockets full of silver spoon tries to convince a lady he is not a burglar.

Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated?
Paul S. (Paul Samuel) Reinsch
Can statecraft function without deception, or are international relations trapped in a perpetual loop of suspicion, armaments, and war?

The factory
Jonathan Thayer Lincoln
Before machine labor redefined human society, individual weavers sat in quiet cottages, laboring over manual looms to earn a meager living from hand-spun yarn.

The Red Flower: Poems Written in War Time
Henry Van Dyke
A storm of verse rises from the shadow of the First World War, capturing the urgency, moral clarity, and mounting dread of a world descending into darkness. These poems serve as a direct, impassioned record of a crisis.

White Slaves
Louis Albert Banks
The sight of a child forced into labor for a pittance is a moral wound that no society should ignore. This investigation into the dark corners of the city exposes the human cost behind the seams of our clothing.

The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and Wonder
Nellie L. McClung
This collection of essays and reflections captures the quiet, profound upheaval of the Canadian home front during the First World War. It is a meditation on resilience, written by a prominent activist who observed the changing roles and responsibilities of those left behind.

A Narrative of the Death of Captain James Cook
David Samwell
HOOK A firsthand account of the final days of a legendary explorer, written by a surgeon who stood on the beach and watched a peaceful visit collapse into violent, irreparable tragedy.

The Irish Constitution: Explained by Darrell Figgis
Darrell Figgis
This focused examination of the 1922 Irish Constitution offers a rare look at the high-stakes political architecture of a new nation. It clarifies the foundational principles and practical mechanics of the Irish Free State’s original legal framework.

The history of the 9th (Scottish) Division, 1914-1919
Ewing, John, M.C.
A rugged, detailed account of the 9th (Scottish) Division’s four-year ordeal, tracing a journey from Kitchener’s volunteer training camps to the final, tense occupation of the Rhine.

Our polar flight
Roald Amundsen
The silent, frozen expanse of the high Arctic offers no quarter to those who seek to conquer it by air. Driven by ambition and mechanical ingenuity, six men gamble their lives against the unforgiving ice of the North Pole.

The War and the Churches
Joseph McCabe
The world’s religious institutions stand condemned by their own history of silence and complicity regarding the persistent barbarism of war. This investigation argues that the Christian Church, despite its centuries of moral authority, has failed to act as a genuine barrier to the slaughter of nations.

War
Pierre Loti
The Great War is a visceral, haunting descent into the trenches of the Western Front, written by a witness who sees the conflict as a definitive, existential struggle between civilization and a uniquely modern, calculated barbarism.

Why Armenia Should Be Free: Armenia's Rôle in the Present War
Armen Garo
The struggle for Armenian independence during the First World War serves as a profound moral touchstone for the meaning of victory, justice, and the survival of small nations against imperial aggression.

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435: Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852
Various
In May 1852, a popular Scottish weekly gathers public controversies, social observations, personal memoirs, and literary portraits into an engaging snapshot of mid-nineteenth-century intellectual life.

Sea Warfare
Rudyard Kipling
Cold North Sea spray, rusted hulls, and the quiet, deadly routine of the men who keep the ocean lanes open form the heart of this portrait of naval endurance during the First World War.

The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science
John W. (John Wesley) Judd
A magnificent revolution in human thought transformed our understanding of the natural world, replacing static creation theories with dynamic processes of gradual change and continuous modification over vast spans of geological time.

German Atrocities: An Official Investigation
J. H. (John Hartman) Morgan
A brutal war shatters human decency as strict legal analysis exposes calculated violence against civilians and captives across the Western Front.

The Argentine Republic
Anonymous
Written as a comprehensive souvenir volume for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, this official survey outlines the rapid modernization, vast natural resources, and growing geopolitical importance of early twentieth-century Argentina.

From Capetown to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War
G. W. (George Warrington) Steevens
A journalist travels to South Africa on the brink of conflict, recording a nation’s slide into open warfare with sharp observation and mounting dread.

Over the Top With the Third Australian Division
G. P. (George Percival) Cuttriss
Bound by an unshakeable belief in their cause, soldiers transform the terror and dirt of Western Front trenches into a testament of resilience, camaraderie, and sudden, unexpected warmth.

Scapa and a Camera: Pictorial Impressions of Five Years Spent at the Grand Fleet Base
C. W. Burrows
The cold, mist-shrouded waters of the Orkney Islands served as the unlikely stage for one of history’s most significant naval vigils. This account captures the transformation of a sleepy northern anchorage into the heart of the Grand Fleet.

Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850
Various
This Victorian periodical serves as a communal clearinghouse for historical curiosities, literary detective work, and the preservation of fading folk traditions. It provides a fascinating, unfiltered window into the mid-nineteenth-century intellectual appetite for antiquarian discovery.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914
Various
The humor of a nation at war finds a biting, weary, and resolute voice in these final pages of 1914. It is a chronicle of a world turning upside down, captured in the sharp wit of a weekly tradition.

Isis very much unveiled, being the story of the great Mahatma hoax
Fydell Edmund Garrett
This investigation tracks the internal collapse of a high-profile mystical society, tracing how religious leaders used fraudulent "Mahatma" correspondence to control their followers and consolidate personal power.

The Winning of Popular Government: A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
Archibald MacMechan
The winning of popular government was a hard-fought evolution, transforming Canada from a fractured, rebellious collection of colonies into a self-governing, unified nation through the crucible of political strife and constitutional experiment.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, September 5, 1917
Various
This collection of British wartime wit offers a sharp, satirical window into the daily anxieties, absurdities, and domestic realities of life in 1917. It reveals the persistent human need for laughter as a buffer against the grim machinery of the Great War.

The great probability of a North West Passage: deduced from observations on the letter of Admiral de Fonte
Unknown
A determined geographer sifts through the remnants of an obscure Spanish expedition, building a rigorous case for the existence of a navigable route between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

On the King's Service: Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms
Innes Logan
A Scottish army chaplain bears witness to the quiet fortitude, shattered bodies, and enduring faith of soldiers enduring the grim reality of Western Front trench warfare.