South America

Launched for the Peruvian navy in 1865, the Huascar was captured by Chile in the war of 1879. David Woodward analyses the large part it has played in Chilean history.

Roger Howell discovers that the Spaniards who conquered the Americas had little real understanding of the civilizations that they overthrew.

George Pendle finds that the authoress of Little Arthur's History of England was also an inquisitive and adventurous traveller.

Despite recent difficulties, Britain and Argentina have endured a long and fruitful relationship, as Paul Lay explains.

For all its faults C.E Hamshere’s account of Francis Drake’s 16th-century circumnavigation, published in History Today in 1967, applies a historical imagination lacking in more recent studies, argues Hugh Bicheno.

At Deptford, on April 4th, 1581, Francis Drake, who, during the previous autumn, had returned from his triumphant circumnavigation of the globe, knelt before Queen Elizabeth and received a knighthood

N.P. Macdonald explains how modern Brazil owes its extensive frontiers, and the discovery of many of its natural riches, to the journeys far inland, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of pioneers in search of slaves.

George Pendle retraces attempts by the British to seize control of Spanish colonies around the La Plata Basin, now part of Argentina and Uruguay.

A.L. Lloyd savours modern Argentina, “a civilization of horses, cattle and leather”.

C.A. Burland describes the highly developed, sprawling and ancient Incan civilisation in the years preceding its conquest by the Spanish seaborne empire.