Images

Between c. 1450 and 1650, demand for spices and other high-value plant commodities became an important catalyst for European maritime expansion. Pepper, cinnamon, cloves...

Korean War Armistice Agreement, 1953, photograph by F. Kazukaitis. US Navy, Panmunjom, 27 July, 1953. This is a photograph of the agreement that ended the fighting in the Korean War. Seated on the left is UN delegate...

President Truman and General MacArthur at Wake Island, photograph by the US State Department, 15 October 1950. This is a photograph of US President Harry S. Truman (left) meeting with General Douglas...

A photograph taken after the US bombing raid on Tokyo in March 1945 which caused a firestorm that killed over 87,000 people.

A photograph taken after the US bombing raid on Tokyo in March 1945 which caused a firestorm that killed over 87,000 people. Many more people were made homeless and obliged to evacuate the Japanese capital.

The British East India Company's (EIC) rise to power in India accelerated between 1757 and 1765 as a commercial corporation increasingly acquired military...

A 1945 photograph showing a US serviceman checking clusters of incendiary bombs destined to be dropped on Japan by Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers. Imperial War Museums

Portrait of Franklin Pierce, oil on canvas by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1853. Franklin Pierce held the American presidency from 1853 to 1857, during which he signed into law the Kansas-Nebraska...

Portrait of Franklin Pierce in military garb, engraving by Waterman Lilly Ormsby, c. 1852. Before Franklin Pierce would come to hold the American presidency, he enlisted in the summer of 1846 to fight in the Mexican-American...

Great Footrace for the Presidential Purse ($100,000 and Pickings) Over the Union Course 1852, lithograph by Currier & Ives, 1852. Here, a cartoon parodies the three candidates in the US presidential election...