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"A afirmação é do investigador Damião Rodrigues que pretende demonstrar que os Açores tiveram um papel mais importante na história do que a maioria das pessoas pensa. O conceito de "Atlantic history" é uma das bases do projecto "Um navio ibérico para o Atlântico: construção naval, vida a bordo e a escala de Angra nos séculos XVI e XVII". Trata-se de um trabalho da responsabilidade de Damião Rodrigues que vai receber uma verba de 105.000,00 euros. O objectivo passa por valorizar o património histórico e arqueológico da Região. Damião Rodrigues pretende demonstrar que os Açores desempenharam um papel na história "mais central do que aquilo que se poderia pensar" O investigador defende, por isso, que "as ilhas e os arquipélagos eram e são pontes naturais entre massas continentais e mundos oceânicos. No mundo atlântico, as ilhas desempenharam várias funções estratégicas, económicas, culturais e, por isso, não podem ser ignoradas. Integrar os Açores neste quadro, como tem vindo a ser feito, é demonstrar que as ilhas eram mais centrais do que se poderia pensar", continua. Damião Rodrigues tem, assim, explorado o conceito de "Atlantic history", de forma a desconstruir a ideia de que se trata, sobretudo, "de uma história do Atlântico Norte e, em particular, do Atlântico inglês ou britânico". "Quando falamos de "Atlantic history", falamos de um modelo ou de uma tendência historiográfica que se afirmou a partir dos EUA, com Bernard Bailyn, e da Johns Hopkins, com Jack Greene", explica. Trata-se de uma corrente que, tomando como unidade histórica de base o espaço atlântico, assume uma perspectiva integradora que contempla todos os povos e regiões envolvidos nas dinâmicas de construção do «mundo atlântico». Segundo Damião Rodrigues, "a "Atlantic history" tem, até ao momento, seguido uma lógica historiográfica hegemónica que ignora ou secundariza o Atlântico Sul". O investigador acredita ainda que "assistimos a uma interna

"In a film-making career spanning almost 40 years, Oliver Stone has turned political controversy in America into an art form. He has upset financiers with his caustic portrayal of Wall Street; conservatives with his depiction of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and George Bush; and Democrats with his conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F Kennedy. All of which may come to look like a tea party - of the social as opposed to right-wing protest variety - when his next big venture hits the screens. Stone announced yesterday that a 10-hour crash course in the history of the 20th century he is putting together for American TV is designed as an antidote to the inaccuracies and biases he believes exist in the conventional historical narrative dished out in American schools and mainstream media. The title alone gives an inkling of what lies ahead: Oliver Stone's Secret History of America. The thrice-Oscar winning director gave a further glimpse into his thinking at a gathering of TV critics in Pasadena on Saturday, when he didn't so much open up a can of worms as unleash an entire supermarket shelf-load. He began by startling the panel by bringing up the H word. "Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply," he said. Then he mentioned the S word. "Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person." Then he went on to mention two M words - Chairman Mao and Joseph McCarthy, architect of the 1950s anti-communist purges in Washington, and the T word - Harry Truman's dropping of the atom bomb in 1945."

"Everyone who visits Auschwitz remembers the hair: almost two tons of it, piled behind glass in mounds taller than a person. When I first visited the camp, in 1991, the hair was still black and brown, red and blond, gray and white-emotionally overwhelming evidence of the lives extinguished there. When I returned this past autumn, the hair was a barely differentiated mass of gray, more like wool than human locks. Only the occasional braid signaled the remnants of something unprecedented and awful-the site where the Third Reich perpetrated the largest mass murder in human history. At least 1.1 million people were killed here, most within hours of their arrival. This January 27 marks the 65th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation by Soviet soldiers. The Nazis operated the camp between May 1940 and January 1945-and since 1947, the Polish government has maintained Auschwitz, which lies about 40 miles west of Krakow, as a museum and memorial. It is a Unesco World Heritage site, a distinction usually reserved for places of culture and beauty. But Auschwitz-with its 155 buildings and hundreds of thousands of artifacts-is deteriorating. It is a conservation challenge like no other. "Our main problem is sheer numbers," Jolanta Banas, the head of preservation, tells me as we walk through the white-tiled facility where she and her 48-member staff work. "We measure shoes in the ten thousands." Banas introduces me to conservators working to preserve evidence of camp life: fragments of a mural depicting an idealized German family that once decorated the SS canteen, floor tiles from a prisoners barrack. In one room, a team wielding erasers, brushes and purified water clean and scan 39,000 yellowing medical records written on everything from card stock to toilet paper. The Auschwitz camp itself covers 50 acres and comprises 46 historical buildings, including two-story red brick barracks, a kitchen, a crematorium and several brick and concrete administration

Our world is more interconnected than ever. We call it globalization, but without good histories to explain how we got here, we cannot begin to know where we are heading. The new master's program at Columbia and the LSE will ask students to explore our world by studying the forces that have been remaking it: migration, trade, technological revolutions, epidemic disease, environmental change, wars and diplomacy. Working with preeminent historians in the field, students will analyze large-scale historical processes, pursue empirical research, and produce their own comparative and cross-cultural histories. This two-year program connects vibrant intellectual communities in two global cities. It culminates in a master's degrees in international and world history from both institutions.

"In this list we see a combination of two of my favorite things - ancient (well mostly) history and warriors. While most of these warrior groups come from ancient history - one or two come close to modern history. They all, undoubtedly, belong on this list. Please mention other groups who might be considered for a future list in the comments."

Welcome to European History Primary Sources (EHPS), an index of scholarly websites that offer online access to digitised primary sources on the history of Europe. The websites listed on EHPS are not only meta-sources but also include invented archives and born digital sources. Each website that is listed in EHPS has a short description and is categorised according to country, language, period, subject and type of source. The portal can be searched in a variety of ways. The listed websites can be accessed for free, though sometimes a registration is required. EHPS is a work in progress and new content is regularly added. In order to stay updated on new entries or specific categories in which you are interested it is possible to subscribe to RSS feeds or to follow EHPS on Twitter.

"The program is designed to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of and appreciation for traditional U.S. history. Grant awards will assist LEAs, in partnership with entities that have content expertise, to develop, document, evaluate, and disseminate innovative and cohesive models of professional development. By helping teachers to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of U.S. history as a separate subject matter within the core curriculum, these programs will improve instruction and raise student achievement. "

Francis Fukuyama will always be best known for one cosmic soundbite - "The End of History". This has given him an undeserved reputation as a political optimist, the man who believes that everything will turn out all right for democracy if we just let history run its course. In fact, Fukuyama is a much gloomier thinker than you might guess, always on the lookout for what can go wrong. The End of History, which was published in 1992, is a pretty depressing book (much more depressing than the original 1989 article on which it is based). It is overshadowed by the influence of one of Fukuyama's mentors, the conservative Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom. Bloom thought that American society was drowning in a sea of intellectual relativism and pop cultural pap, and Fukuyama worried that the post-1989 triumph of democracy threatened more of the same. With no big ideological battles to fight any more, politics would just become one mindless thing after another.

"Top 10 Greatest Empires In History"

"10 Great Financial Collapses in History"

"The end of history"

"History is full of people who were just plain bigots. The disease of racism and bigotry is a universal one, affecting people of every race, religion, nation, etc. The following list is the top ten of these men who, through ignorance, are at the forefront of bigotry."

"Robert Colvile delights in Germania by Simon Winder, a quirky alternative history of the Deutsch countries "

The website of the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme (BDOHP) makes available online the transcripts of the BDOHP interviews. The original material is conserved at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. "The BDOHP interviews former diplomats or other officials who have played a significant role in events bearing on international relations. The tendency towards greater openness in government has strengthened in recent years. Interviewees are encouraged by their interviewers to be candid and not to allow their instinctive respect for confidentiality to inhibit a frank description of what it is they have contributed to British diplomacy. They are however assured that what they say will not be published or put into the public domain without their permission or prior FCO clearance.

""A People's History of the United States" chronicled the nation's development through voices of women, minorities and the working class, telling the American story as series of episodes where the state and big business colluded to crush socialism. American Leftists celebrated the work at a time when conservatism as embodied by President Ronald Reagan was ascendant. More than one million copies have been sold. Zinn was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1922 into a Jewish immigrant family. During the Second World War he enlisted in the US army and flew in planes that bombed targets in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. He wrote in the magazine "The Progressive" in 2006 that his military service had informed his anti-war views. "Once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil ... we did not have to think any more. Then we could commit unspeakable acts and it was all right," Zinn said. Zinn earned a bachelor's degree from New York University in 1951 and later a master's and a doctorate in history from Columbia University in New York. Weeks before his death Zinn wrote in "The Nation" magazine of his disappointment with President Barack Obama. "I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president - unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction." "

"On the ground floor of the British Museum is one of the most important artefacts in archaeological history, the Rosetta Stone. Effectively a tax decree dating from the reign of Ptolemy V in the second century BC, it enabled scholars to crack the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Without it the entire field of Egyptology would be very different. But along its left-hand edge runs a painted inscription, still visible today, that testifies to a different historical agenda. "Captured in Egypt," it reads, "by the British Army 1801." And, as the historian Holger Hoock points out in this learned, engrossing book, the famous stone is just one example of the extraordinary connections between art, war, archaeology and empire in the age of Nelson and Wellington. As the colour plates in Hoock's book make clear, the arts during the reigns of George III and George IV were saturated in the rhetoric of military glory and masculine prowess. Although Napoleon quipped that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers, he would have been more accurate to call it a nation of warriors. The period opened with Britain about to fight and win the Seven Years' War, arguably the first global conflict; it ended with Britain as the world's undoubted superpower, "unsurpassed in global reach and power". And to those who built and maintained the largest empire in history, art mattered - not merely for its own sake or as an expression of civilisation, but as a way of projecting power and affirming national identity. Painters produced huge canvases celebrating great victories, sculptors chiselled poignant memorials mourning the fallen, archaeologists ransacked the deserts of the Middle East for classical antiquities, all of them contributing to a vast project to celebrate Britain's new-found glory. "

"Melanie McGrath is intrigued by Siri Hustvedt's account of a mysterious ailment, The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves "

"10 Greatest Empires in the History of World"

"10 More Strange Jobs From History"